A family reunion. A Nashville bar mitzvah. An ambulance, just in case. Michael has come to celebrate with his family. Then someone asks him how to vote. It is 2008, and a question about Obama and McCain turns the buffet line into a battleground. Gathered in Nashville for a bar mitzvah, Michael's Hungarian Jewish American relatives have three days to catch up, revisit old grievances, and explain exactly where everyone else went wrong. Politics, religion, intermarriage-nothing is off the table. Michael answers discomfort with jokes, sometimes making everything worse. Between the arguments and the stuffed cabbage, he finds himself confronting something harder to laugh away: the people who connect him to his past are growing older, and the traditions he took for granted may disappear with them. Distance Is a Mitzvah is an irreverent family satire about aging, identity, and the complicated business of belonging. For readers who like their family fiction sharp, opinionated, and willing to make dinner uncomfortable.